March 4-8 is Severe Weather Awareness Week and Trisha Rooda, Director of the Sedalia-Pettis County Emergency Management Agency, is trying to raise people’s situational awareness during inclement weather.
Tornado sirens across Missouri will be tested at exactly 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 6, if the weather permits.
“We are going to have some weather,” Rooda warned. “There's chances of rain Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon, so it will depend on the weather if we get to have that statewide drill.”
Usually, SPCEMA tests the local tornado sirens at noon on the first Wednesday of the month; today, they will blare at 11 a.m. and Rooda hopes everyone will take the opportunity to think about where they could go in dangerous weather.
“For our county, all of our sirens will alert,” Rooda said, “and then for the whole state of Missouri, we encourage all businesses, all schools, to participate in that so they're trying to go to a safe place at least once a year and know where it is in their business.”
Being aware heavy weather is in your area is the best way to protect yourself, and staying alert to dangerous storms is crucial to staying safe.
“If you have the day off from work and we're having severe weather and you're out shopping or you're going out to eat and you know that the weather is getting inclement, you need to be informed,” Rooda said. “You need to have situational awareness.”
Rooda said a recent AT&T service outage is an example of one mode of weather warning being down temporarily.
“I promote three ways to be informed in case we have something as a failure,” Rooda said. “So if that's the app on your phone, or you're going to have NIXLE, how are you going to know about the weather? Do you have a NOAA weather radio at home that's going to wake you up in the middle of the night?”
Those with weather radios can get them programmed at Emergency Management to reduce the number of unnecessary alerts.
“We program those for free at our office, so if you do have one, make sure you're changing the batteries,” Rooda said. “If you don't like the way it's programmed and it goes off all the time, don’t unplug it, let's program it for what you want.”
Those with cell phones can register with NIXLE for weather alerts via text or email, and Emergency Management can help with that as well.
“Your electronic alerts, if you have a newer phone, those are automatically put in your phone, they will go off,” Rooda said. “The National Weather Service, they'll broadcast that to TV, so if severe weather’s coming in, make sure that you're watching on your local stations.”
People living in Smithton are temporarily without a tornado siren as their 40-year-old siren was recently damaged.
“They had some siren issues, and their siren is nonfunctional right now,” Rooda said. “They were in the process of ordering a new siren, but it did get knocked down in high winds.”
Until replaced, firefighters may warn residents by driving fire trucks around and making announcements. Still, that won’t be enough for all rural areas.
“It's an outdoor warning system; it's not meant to wake you up in the middle of the night,” Rooda said. “If you live out in the country, more than likely, you don't have access to a siren.”
Rooda took the Democrat on a tour of the local tornado shelters she manages.
“We're going to check some of our FEMA shelters,” Rooda said. “We have eight of them that we’re in charge of throughout the county. We have FEMA shelters, one in each town in Pettis County; there's two in Sedalia.”
The shelters are plain cement bunkers that can safely house 800 to 1,500 people during a tornado watch or warning.
“It has two bathrooms, it’s on a generator, it has lots of areas that you can plug into,” Rooda said, “but people are welcome to use that during a watch or a tornado warning.”
With the shelters ready for tornadic activity, Rooda encourages people to know where they are, to watch the weather and to have a plan.
“Let's say you're at a softball game in the summertime and you're on a traveling team in a new town,” Rooda said. “Different schools, you know what their protocols are? Who's going to inform you when you're at that event? Do you know who's in charge of that scenario, and if you don't know, then how are you going to be informed?”
For more information on Pettis County tornado shelters, visit www.pettiscomo.com/ema. To register for NIXLE alerts, visit local.nixle.com/register. For more information about severe weather safety from Missouri Storm Aware, visit stormaware.mo.gov.
Chris Howell can be reached at 660-530-0146.
